Halo and Hogwarts Book 1: Master Chief and the Philosopher's Stone
by TimeLordSPARTAN
Summary: Master Chief didn't just get trapped away from Earth, he was sent back in time. Now, the Dawn has drifted back to Earth, John and Cortana become Harry Potter's siblings, and The Flood is biding its time before its return. Can John, Harry and Cortana defeat both Voldemort and The Flood? Based on JK Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Also a Maximum Ride crossover.
1. Arrival

**-Prologue (No Real POV)-**

"Wake up, Chief," Cortana said, staring at the cryo tube, "I need you."

The tube's glass began to clear as the cryo tube slowly thawed, revealing the green helmet of the greatest soldier who ever lived.

**-MC-**

John-117 awoke slowly. He had always hated waking up from cryo sleep. It was similar to waking up on a stone slab, with an airhorn screaming in your face, and then getting kicked onto the ground by a mantis. He slowly woke up, beginning to sense the world around him.

"Chief! Can you hear me, Chief?" he heard the voice, but he still wasn't awake enough to respond. Suddenly, he felt a jolt of electricity go through his body, waking him up completely.

"Chief!"

He looked around, seeing the interior of the Dawn and Cortana on the AI pedestal. The cryo tube opened an instant later, and he stepped out.

"Why did you wake me?" he asked, shaking his head to clear it. As he did so, he noticed a new display on his HUD, showing various symbols including a running man, a crouching man and a man using a jet pack.

"And what does this new display mean?" Cortana answered the second question first.

"I managed to install all of the armour modifications used by the spartan-III's during the fall of Reach, including the covenant ones, permanently into your suit. Unfortunately, you can only use one at any time, and they all share a power source, so they recharge and expend together. I also managed to use the ship'a systems to create a backpack capable of storing a virtually infinite amount of ammunition for two weapons. It resembles the one worn by Spartan-052, again during the fall of Reach."

Chief noticed the large, backpack-like object sitting by the pedestal.

"Why did you wake me?" he asked again. Cortana looked slightly flustered.

"Right! Ok... I woke you because we're entering the gravitational pull of a planetary body." Chief was confused.

"The planet we're now in a decaying orbit around has the exact same gravitational pull as Earth." Chief was now stunned.

"You're saying we're orbiting Earth." Cortana nodded.

"but I can't find any UNSC ships in orbit, nor can I find any UNSC signal of any kind!" she finished, seeming exasperated.

"All I can find is a bunch of primitive satellites on decaying orbits with barely enough processing power on them to fly a ballistic missile!" Chief looked her in the eye, and she slowly calmed down.

"What century do the satellites say we're in?" he asked her calmly. She turned away from him before becoming a sphere of light and disappearing. She returned an instant later to make a single comment:

"Whatever century it is, the primitive satellites orbiting this planet have next to no security, so I'd say it's pretty long ago." Chief nodded, and turned to search the room for other useful items. The room held a few relatively undamaged vehicles, including a scorpion and a pelican, and from these Chief got an idea. First, though, he needed equipment. He crossed over to the far side of the room to search for weapons. There he found a large quantity of assault rifles, shotguns, magnums, and for some strange reason, energy swords. He grabbed the "ammo backpack" from next to the pedestal and emptied the assault rifles and shotguns into it, before throwing it on his back (it was surprisingly light) and attaching a shotgun to one side and an assault rifle to the other. As an afterthought, he grabbed two energy swords and attached them to the sides of his legs.

"Chief!" He turned to see Cortana waving at him from the pedestal. "I found the date! It took awhile - terrible file sorting on those things - but, Chief, it's the late twentieth century!" John-117 was stunned by this news, but he collected himself and moved over to the pedestal.

"The way I see the situation is like this," he told her. "We can sit here, waiting to fall into the atmosphere and probably get killed on impact, or we can take the pelican in the hangar - preferably with the scorpion attached - and fly down to the surface now." Cortana nodded.

"Let's see what twentieth century earth was really like."


	2. The Vanishing Glass

The Librarian reached out across space from the planet in which she was imprisoned, sensing the Spartan plummeting to earth.

"He should not be in this time!" She muttered, knowing she had to do something. What she didn't know was, what could she do?

-MC-

The pelican's engines were screwed. John wrestled with the controls, trying to slow them down or at least land them in the ocean. To his dismay, the controls, while bucking like a bronco, were having no real effect.

"Chief!" Cortana shouted. "If we hit the ground in this thing, we're dead!"

Chief made a decision. He reached over and yanked Cortana's AI chip out of the pelican console. As he plugged it into the port on his helmet, Cortana appeared on his HUD.

"Are you sure about this, Chief?" She asked. He simply nodded, then leapt out of the open bay of the doomed pelican.

-HP-

BOOM!

Harry woke with a start. The cupboard he lived in was raining dust, so clearly something had hit the ground nearby. Either that, or it was an earthquake, and he didn't think earthquakes were too common around Privet Drive. He opened the door of the cupboard, peeking to see whether anyone else had heard it. No-one else was moving, and if Uncle Dursley had heard he would be making a right racket, thumping down the stairs and shouting about people setting off bombs or something.

He crept down the hall, not making a sound as he opened the front door. He peeked around. Nothing. Then he saw the massive crater in the Dursley's front lawn. He slowly moved over to it, slightly frightened. In it was a man, wearing green, futuristic armour with a visor that seemed to be solid gold. As Harry watched, though, the man began to glow...

-MC-

The white light faded. Before him stood a woman. She was not exactly pretty, but somehow he knew she was very important.

"John-117," she said, "you are a long time from home." He nodded, glancing around. Wherever he was, it was all the same shade of grey. Everywhere, except around the woman and around him.

"You should not be here, but since you are you may as well help this world. The garden you landed in is in front of the place where the most important boy of this time is. In order to help you help him, I am virtually rewriting the memories of him and his guardians." Chief nodded again, somehow unsurprised that she could do that.

"Unfortunately, it is hard to explain a large man in green armour living with the boy, so I shall also have to change you. You will be reduced to his age, so that you may follow his footsteps. He shall know you as his brother, as shall everyone who knows of him. Your armour shall be stored at the school, remembered by everyone as left there by your father. Your construct, however..." The woman seemed unsure of what to do.

"Make Cortana human, like me," John told her. "Make her the sister of this boy and of me." The woman nodded.

"Yes, that does seem like the simplest way. But of the three siblings, I must make either you or her different." Chief nodded again.

"Make me the different one. If it's a disability, I'd rather have it than see Cortana suffer through it. If it's beneficial, I could most likely use it better than Cortana. She will have enough trouble getting used to a physical form." The woman agreed.

"Very well. I shall return you to your body now, and remember: no-one should know where you are from, and everyone should think of you two as the siblings of Harry Potter."

-HP-

"Up! Get up! Now!"

Harry woke with a start. His aunt rapped on the door again.

"Up!" she screeched. Harry rolled onto his back and tried to remember the dream he had been having. It had been one of two good ones he could remember. There had been a giant green man in it. The other one had a flying motorbike. Yep, Harry had strange dreams. On the other side of the cramped cupboard, John and Cortana groaned as they woke up. Harry had always wondered what kind of a name Cortana was, but he had never really verbalised the question.

...Later...

"Make it move," Dudley whined at his father. Uncle Vernon rapped the glass smartly with his knuckles, but the snake just snoozed on.

"This is boring."

Harry, John and Cortana moved in front of the tank and looked intently at the snake, when it suddenly opened its eyes. Slowly, it raised its head until it's eyes were level with Harry's. Of course, Cortana was shorter than Harry, and John was freakishly taller, so it was clearly focused on Harry.

_It winked._

Harry stared. Cortana and John looked at one another. The snake jerked its head towards the Dursleys, then raised its eyes to the ceiling. It gave Harry a look that said:

_"I get that all the time."_

-MC-

"I know," Harry murmured through the glass, "It must be really annoying." John looked at Harry like he was insane. Talking to a snake? Acting like it had said something already? Bah!

The snake nodded vigorously. Now John was staring at the snake instead of Harry.

"Where do you come from, anyway?" Harry asked. The snake jabbed its tail at a sign next to the glass.

"Boa Constrictor, Brazil," John read aloud.

"Was it nice there?" Harry asked the snake. Cortana gripped his shoulder gently.

"The sign says it was bred in the zoo," she told him softly.

"Oh," Harry said, looking slightly sad, "so you've ne dr been to Brazil?"

As the snake shook its head, a deafening shout from behind them made them all jump.

"MUMMY! DADDY! YOU WON'T _BELIEVE _WHAT THE SNAKE IS DOING!" Dudley shoved Cortana aside, causing her to fall and knock Harry forward slightly before she hit the hard, stone floor. John was only a second faster than Harry as he helped her sit up. Harry shot a hard look at Dudley.

What came next happened so fast no one saw how it happened - one second, Dudley was pressing his fat face against the glass, next he was in the water in the enclosure and the snake was slithering past him on its way out. Harry and John gasped; the glass had vanished, and the snake was slithering past. Later, Harry would tell the other two he had heard it say:

_"Brazil, here I come... Thanksss, amigo."_

But all John had heard was a hiss, and Cortana was to busy trying to stand up after her fall.

What happened next, though, was what really ruined the Potters' day. Dudley stood up, and tried to grab the handrail outside the enclosure to pull his fat, bulbous body out. All he got for trying this, though, was a few injured fingers as they his a transparent barrier.

The glass had come back, trapping Dudley inside.

A few hours later, the Dursleys and the Potters were back at Privet Drive. Uncle Vernon turned to the three of them, so mad that he couldn't articulate full sentences.

"Go - cupboard - stay - no meals," he told them, before collapsing into a chair, sending Aunt Petunia running to get him a large brandy.

Hours later, the Potters lay in their cupboard, wishing they knew the time. Sadly, they had to wait for the Dursleys to go to sleep before they could sneak to the kitchen.

"Ten years, we've lived with them," John said, "Ten years of punishments for no apparent reason than something unusual happened. Why has no-one claimed us as family? Surely Mum and Dad couldn't have been our only relations other than this lot?"

Cortana sighed sadly.

"They must have been," she said. Their parents had died in a car crash when they were at the age of one. If Harry concentrated enough, he had said, he could remember "this massive flash of green light, and then my scar aches for awhile afterward." This, they had thought, must have been the car crash. None of them could think where the green light had come from, though. Similarly, none of them could figure out whT could have given Harry a scar on his forehead in the precise shape of a bolt of lightning.

"Remember those weird people who seemed to know Harry?" Cortana asked out of the blue.

"Yeah," Harry replied, "like that tiny dude with the violet top hat?"

"Or the wild-looking old woman who waved at you from the bus?" John continued.

"Or," Cortana said, giggling, "That bald man who shook your hand?"

"Did you notice, they seemed to vanish when you check to see if they're following us?" John asked.

"Trust you to notice that above everything else, Chief," Cortana said.

"Chief?" John asked, "who's Chief?" Cortana looked at him.

"Slip of the tongue, I think," she told him.

At that, they decided to get some sleep, despite being hungry. John lay on his back in the old double bed that the Dursley's had put in the cupboard when they realised one single bed couldn't sleep three.

_ "Who on earth is Chief?" _he asked himself. Chief sounded like a title. John had no title, he was just one of three unfortunate ten-year-old triplets living in a cupboard...

Wasn't he?

-On the UNSC _Forward Unto Dawn _(Rear Half)-

_The parasite stirred. There was nothing for it to infect on this hulk, but it could sense a planet nearby. A planet with plenty of food. It remembered the name of this planet from when it had had a Gravemind. The planet was called Earth. _

The rear half of the UNSC Frigate _Forward Unto Dawn _slowly spiralled down toward the surface of planet Earth. In seven years, it would hit the atmosphere of the planet.

And then the Flood would feed.


	3. The Letters from the Keeper of Keys

By the time the Potter children were allowed out of their cramped cupboard (did I mention that the old bed was left in there when the other one was put in? Harry sleeps in the single one) the school holidays had started and Dudley had already broken his new camera, crashed his remote-control plane and, first time on his new racing bike, knocked down Mrs Figg as she crossed the street on her crutches.

They were all sitting down to a hearty (or, in the case of the potters, stingy) breakfast when they heard the click of the letterbox and the flop of letters on the doormat.

"Get the post, Dudley," Uncle Vernon said.

"Make Harry get it."

"Get the post, Harry."

"Make Dudley get it."

"Oh, for crying out loud!" Cortana interrupted. She stood up and strode out to the hallway. Uncle Vernon shrugged and returned to his returned a couple of minutes later, a few letters in her hand. She handed Uncle Vernon a bill and a postcard before sitting down next to John and Harry. John heard a faint rustle of paper as she sat down, but she looked at him and shook her head slightly. She clearly didn't want anyone to know she had paper in her pocket. That afternoon, Dudley's gang came around for a spot of Potter-hunting. This time, they managed to grab Cortana. Two of Dudley's friends held her arms behind her back while Dudley started punching her stomach.

"What... kind of a... name," he asked, punctuating every few words with a punch, "... is Cortana... anyway?" Before anyone realised what had happened, Dudley's friends had jumped backward, crying our in pain. Cortana collapsed as they let go. No-one had noticed except for John and Dudley, but they had seen Cortana's body flash blue for an instant, becoming covered in blue lines with tiny text running along them. As soon as John got over his shock, he jumped on Dudley, knocking him to the ground. Before anyone else could react, he was strangling him.

"John!" Cortana shouted, drawing his attention away from Dudley. He loosened his grip, allowing Dudley to breathe again.

"If you _ever_ hurt my sister again," he told the fat boy underneath him, "I might not let go until after you stop breathing." Dudley nodded, scared out of his life.

Later, the Potter children were in their cupboard, sitting on their beds.

"Come on, Cortana, spill! What other letters were there?" Cortana pulled three old-looking envelopes out of her pocket. They all looked at them, slightly astounded by the addresses.

_Mr H Potter_

_ The Cupboard under the Stairs_

_ 4 Privet Drive_

_ Little Whinging_

_ Surrey_

_Mr J Potter_

_ The Cupboard under the Stairs_

_ 4 Privet Drive_

_ Little Whinging_

_ Surrey_

_Miss C Potter_

_ The Cupboard under the Stairs_

_ 4 Privet Drive_

_ Little Whinging_

_ Surrey_

"They've got our cupboard on them!" John exclaimed. Cortana shushed him, reminding him of their need to be quiet.

John broke the seal, a coat of arms bearing a lion, an eagle, a badger and a snake surrounding a large "H", and began to read aloud.

_HOGWARTS SCHOOL OF WITCHCRAFT AND WIZARDRY_

"Wait, what?" Harry asked, interrupting John.

"Hogwarts School of-"

"I know, I heard you. But a school for magic? That just sounds stupid." John thought for a moment.

"I'm going to keep reading. It did have the cupboard on it."

_Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore_

_(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)_

_Dear Mr Potter,_

_ We are pleased to inform you that you have a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all neccessary books and equipment._

_ Term begins on 1 September._

_Yours Sincerely,_

_Minerva McGonagall_

_Deputy Headmistress_

"Seriously? That's the impressive letter? It's clearly a joke. It's probably Dudley."

_BOOM_

The sound was like a thunderclap, but John could tell it was the door.

_BOOM_

"What on earth is that racket!" Uncle Dursley shouted, coming down the hall to wrench open the cupboard door.

_BOOM_

"Who's there?" he asked, stopping short of the cupboard. John pushed it open slowly, peeking to see what it was.

_SMASH!_

The door's hinges broke, and it landed flat on the floor. Outside was a giant of a man, framed by the light of the streetlamp in the doorframe. He stepped inside.

"Sorry 'bout that," he chuckled, picking up the door and putting it back in its place.

"I'm here for the Potters. I believe they just read their letters." Uncle Vernon turned to the cupboard, his eyes shining with hatred and glee. Hatred that they had read the letters, glee that he was finally getting rid of them.

"Harry! John! Cortana! There's a big scary man out here who's come to take you away!" he called in a sing-song voice. John threw the door open so fast it hit Uncle Vernon in the face.

"Come on, guys! Wherever this guy's taking us, it's got to be better than here!" Harry and Cortana agreed, and together they followed the big man out of the house and down the road.


	4. Diagon Alley and the Leaky Cauldron

John stared at the place that no-one else seemed to see. Everyone on the street simply walked past it. No-one went in, and when they looked at it their eyes seemed to slide from the place next to it to the other side.

"Come on." The large man, who had introduced himself as Rubeus Hagrid, pushed the three of them forward and into the dingy room. It turned out to be the inside of a tavern, pub or inn. There was a general hubbub of activity, and many people were talking to one another.

As soon as they entered, the room fell silent and still.  
"Bless my soul," one man said, taking off his hat, "It's the Potters!"  
Immediately, they were surrounded by everyone in the room, all of them shaking their hands and introducing themselves.  
"I know you!" Harry exclaimed, "you bowed to me once in a shop!"  
"He remembers!" a short man wearing a violet top hat exclaimed excitedly.

Eventually, they managed to find their way through the mob, and Hagrid moved them over to the one person who hadn't swarmed them.  
"Misters and miss P-Potter!" he exclaimed, offering his hand. "C-cant tel you how p-pleased I am to meet you."  
"Hello, Professor!" Hagrid exclaimed. "Harry, John, Cortana, this is Professor Quirrel. He'll be your defence against the dark arts teacher."  
They shook his hand, slightly confused by all of the attention.

"We must be going, now. Lots to buy!"

They moved into a back room.  
"How come everyone knows us?" John asked, pre-empting Harry's question.  
"I'll tell you later," Hagrid replied, muttering something under his breath. He took his umbrella and tapped a brick on the wall. Seconds later, the wall was an archway into a crowded street.  
"Okay," Cortana said, surprised, "that was pretty impressive."

_Much later__..._

"You never explained why everyone knows us, Hagrid," Cortana pointed out as they walked down to Kings Cross Station. Hagrid shrugged, before giving them the briefest explanation he could manage.  
"You survived an attack by the most powerful dark wizard ever to live, but your parents didn't."  
"So it _wasn't_ a car crash..."  
"A car crash?" Hagrid shouted, "a car crash kill Lily and James Potter? Outrageous!" Cortana managed to calm the gigantic man down before he attracted too much attention.

When they reached Kings Cross, all hagrid did was give them each a ticket and tell them it was important to "stick to your ticket" before he left them. They read the tickets.  
"Ok, let me know if yours says anything different," Cortana said, "but mine says "Platform 9 and 3/4."  
"Mine too," Harry said.  
"And mine," John continued.  
"Okay," Cortana continued, "what the _hell_ is Platform 9 3/4?"


	5. The Hogwarts Express

_"What the hell is platform 9 3/4?"_

* * *

"Well, wherever it is, it should be somewhere between platforms nine and ten, shouldn't it?" John responded, seeming surprisingly logical. Of course, they all knew it didn't exist. They strolled along the platforms, searching for a sign that said something along the lines of "Platform 9 3/4".

They had no luck, until they heard a snippet of conversation from behind them.  
"- packed with Muggles, of course -" John turned to the others. Harry had spun around, and Cortana was already in pursuit of the group the phrase had come from. The boys followed her, marvelling at their luck. _Muggles,_ John thought, _that was one of the words Hagrid had mentioned, talking about non-wizards, I think._  
"Now, what's the platform number?" asked a plump, red-haired woman.  
"Nine and three-quarters!" a little girl, also red-headed, standing next to the woman said.  
"All right, Percy, you go first." The oldest-looking boy of the group marched toward the barrier between the two platforms. Right before he reached it, a group of tourists passed in front of the Potters, and John, being abnormally tall, was the only one to see the boy vanish into the barrier.  
"Fred, you next," the woman said.  
"He's not Fred, I am!" said the boy next to him. "Honestly, woman, you call yourself _our_ mother? Can't you _tell_?"  
John wasn't surprised, as the two were identical.  
"Sorry, George, dear."  
"Only joking, I am Fred," said the boy, and he shot off toward the barrier. All of them saw him vanish this time, and his twin straight after him. Before the last boy could go, Cortana hurried up to them.  
"Excuse me," she said to the woman.  
"Hello, dear," she said. "First time at Hogwarts? Ron's new, too." She indicated the last of her sons.  
"We're all new," Cortana told her, indicating her brothers. "But we don't know how to... you know..." she waved her hand at the barrier.  
"Not to worry," she replied kindly. "You just have to walk into the barrier. Don't stop, dont be scared that you'll crash into it. If you do, you'll crash." John nodded, took his trolley and began to sprint at a breakneck pace toward the barrier, closing his eyes right before he hit it...

He didn't hit it. He just kept running, and when he opened his eyes, there it was. Platform 9 3/4.  
"How on earth..." Cortana murmured from just behind him. John chuckled.  
"My guess? Magic," Harry told the two, stating the obvious.  
They pressed through the heavy crowd before reaching the train. John reached down and picked up both his luggage and Cortana's at once, carrying them both up the steps and into the train. Cortana and Harry together managed to shove Harry's luggage up the steps behind John. They soon managed to find an empty compartment - or John did, as no-one else could see past him and two trunks of luggage - and stow away their trunks.

"Excuse me," said a voice from the corridor. "Do you mind if I sit here? everywhere else is full." They all looked at the door, and saw the boy from the platform, the one who hadn't been through before them. Harry moved over to allow him to sit next to him, since Cortana and John were sitting next to each other. As he sat down gratefully, the train whistle screeched, and they started moving.  
"I'm Ron, by the way," the boy said. "Ron Weasley." The three of them introduced themselves, and Ron grew more in awe with each name he heard.  
"Really?" he asked, gazing at them in admiration. None of them quite understood why, and Hagrid's explanation really hadn't helped. Ron turned to Harry.  
"Do you have the scar?" Harry sighed.  
"People know about my _scar_?" Ron nodded.  
"It's almost as legendary as you are!" The Potters looked at one another. Then they all started to laugh.  
"Harry? Legendary?" Cortana said through her giggles. "John's far more impressive than Harry!" Harry nodded in agreement, and John continued to roll on the floor laughing. Ron looked embarrased.  
"Well, John's legendary too. Apparently he was magically blessed with incredible strength." John raised his eyebrows.  
"Like this?" he asked, standing up and pulling down two of the now four trunks stowed away and lifting one with each hand. Ron nodded, his eyes wide, as John stowed them away again.  
"What about me?" Cortana asked, looking almost offended to have been overshadowed by John and Harry.  
"You're where everyone disagrees. no-one knows much about you, but everyone agrees that you were very intelligent, even as a child. Apparently you could do really complicated maths at the age of one!" Cortana nodded, before asking him for a pen and paper.  
"Okay, say any random string of numbers," she told Ron.

"Okay... 8473638364839203746." Cortana wrote them down as fast as he could name them, if not faster.

"And another one?"

"94749579474047393028275849." Again, Cortana wrote them down.

"Addition, subtraction, multiplication or division?" She asked him, her pen hovering above the paper.

"Divide it," Ron replied, confident she'd take a long time to do it. She wrote down a division symbol, then proceeded to write down number after number. John looked over her shoulder at the paper.

8473638364839203746 / 94749579474047393028275849 = 0.000000089431936

"The answer," Cortana said a few seconds after Ron had spoken last, "is zero point zero zero zero zero zero zero zero eight nine four three one nine three six." She showed Ron the paper. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

"Where's all the working out?" he asked shrewdly. Cortana tapped her temple with her forefinger.

"In here," she replied smugly. If Ron's jaw had dropped any lower, John oils have had to pick it up off of the floor. He snickered, before realising that something smelled like smoke. Everyone stopped looking at one another to stare at him.

"John..." Cortana began nervously, "don't freak out, but... well... Your hands are on fire." He looked down.

"Holy mother of-" John began to flail his arms about, trying to shake the flames off. He was about to set the entire compartment on fire when a female voice spoke up from the door.

_"Aguamenti!"_ the voice shouted, and a shower of water arced from the unknown girl's wand onto John's hands. Slowly, the flames dimmed, and John was able to make out the girl.

"Hermione Granger," she introduced herself, "I heard from a friend that the Potters were on the train?"

"You found them," Ron told her. "Miss Granger, meet Harry, John, and Cortana Potter."

Hermione looked at Cortana strangely, wondering the same thing everyone always wondered when they met Cortana.

"Where on earth does a name like Cortana come from?" she asked. Okay, so maybe not _exactly_ the same question, but it's pretty similar. Cortana was, of course, used to being asked that question (or variations of it) and simply shrugged.

"No idea," she said, looking at Hermione

"Anything from the trolley, dears?" John leapt up, closely followed by Harry, and practically ran out of the room to the trolley outside. They all had some money from Gringotts, except for Ron and Hermione, but Cortana wasn't hungry, so she was able to see Ron turn red and mutter something about sandwiches, and Hermione brought out a small tin box with a nicely wrapped lunch inside. Eventually, Harry came back in empty handed.

"What, didn't get anything?" Cortana asked, knowing what the answer would be.

"John's bringing it all in," Harry replied, "he bought a lot." They all watched as John backed in, his arms full of bags filled with food.

"Hungry, eh?" Ron asked, unwrapping his sandwiches. John sat down, putting all of the bags on the ground.

"You have no idea," he replied, glancing at Cortana. She explained as John began to eat very fast.

"John apparently has a 'fast metabolism', meaning he-"

"Digests food faster and less efficiently," Hermione interrupted. Cortana shot her a look before continuing.

"He seems to be able to eat as much as he wants, but the only physical change it seems to create is to increase his overall muscle mass. He has almost no fat on him at all, and after this massive meal of his he'll just get stronger. I, on the other hand, am the exact opposite. I can't eat very much at all, and I seem to be ablue to digest it very well." Ron and Hermione nodded.

John and Harry spent most of the trip eating, and when they pulled into the station at Hogwarts, they had eaten all of the food they had bought.


	6. Sorting and Flames

"Malfoy, Draco!" The teacher called from the front. A pale, blonde-haired boy walked up, sat down on the stool, and waited for the hat to be put on his head.  
"Slytherin!" the hat shouted before it even touched the boy's head. Somehow, Harry, John and Cortana weren't surprised. He looked like the kind of shifty character you could see all along the Slytherin table.  
"Potter, Cortana!" Cortana slowly walked up to the stool, sitting down nervously. The hat came down onto her head, covering her eyes. It waited a few moments before calling out "Gryffindor!" As Cortana sat down with the other Gryffindors, she noticed two vacant seats next to her. Someone at the table was clearly confident that her brothers would be sorted into Gryffindor as well.  
"Potter, Harry!" Harry sat down on the stool, waiting for the hat. When it spoke, it had been on his head for almost two minutes, but it still shouted "Gryffindor!"  
"Potter, John!" John had barely sat down, in fact the teacher hadn't even lowered the hat and it was still a foot above his head, when he heard the hat say "Gryffindor!"  
Everyone was slightly surprised, but nonetheless John still got up and went to sit by his siblings.

When the sorting was finished, the tall, old man sitting at the middle of the staff table, the man everyone knew as Professor Dumbledore, stood up.  
"Let the feast begin!" he proclaimed, and the tables were suddenly full of food. Cortana half expected John and Harry to be completely full already, but she wasn't really surprised when John filled his plate with food. That boy was a bottomless pit. Harry, on the other hand, simply half filled his plate, saying that he was "almost full, but unwilling to offend people." Cortana agreed with him, half filling her plate as well and barely eating any of it.

* * *

_"All I want to know is, did we lose them?"_

_"I think we both know the answer to that."_

* * *

_"If we don't make it..."_

_"We'll make it."_

_"It's been an honor serving with you, John."_

* * *

John sat up. That had been the third time he had had that dream in as many days. He couldn't understand any of it, and he'd even tried asking Harry and Cortana.

Throughout the past week, they had been learning many things. Harry had struggled to get magic at first, but Cortana seemed like a natural. Her only real equal was Hermione, and the two had a fierce rivalry. John, however, was still struggling to master the most basic spells. After they had arrived at Hogwarts, all of the random things that had happened around them, things like vanishing glass, had stopped. Except for when John was around. John seemed almost to be a trigger for strange occurrences, usually things catching fire. Eventually, after the Fat Lady portrait guarding the common room had been extinguished for the fifth time, Professor McGonagall took John to see the headmaster.

John stared around the large, round room. The first thing that caught his eye, though, before the bird or even the desk, was the green suit of armor with the golden visor standing next to the desk. He walked over to it, marveling at how similar it was to the one from his dreams.  
"Ah," said an old voice from behind him, "John. I see you have found the suit your father left me to pass on to you." John spun around to see Professor Dumbledore smiling at him.  
"To... pass on to me?" he asked, slightly doubting his ears. Dumbledore nodded.  
"Go ahead, try it on," he told John kindly. John looked the suit up and down, noting the difference between its size and his own.  
"It's too big," he said doubtfully as he walked up to it. It fell into its component parts as he approached, startling him.  
"Don't worry, it appears to be meant to do that," Dumbledore said as John picked up the chest plate. He put it on, crying out as it suddenly tightened. As soon as it finished tightening, the other pieces flew toward him, assembling themselves on his body until the helmet landed in his hands. he put it on, and it separated into multiple pieces and folded down into the chest plate.  
"It fits perfectly," he said in wonder. Dumbledore sat down behind his desk, smiling from behind his glasses.  
"Now, I believe you were here for burning things?"  
"I don't do it on purpose! It just seems to... happen, around me."  
"It's not uncommon for strange things to happen around young wizards, but this appears to be different. Hold out your hand, pointing your palm at the table over there." John did so.  
"Now concentrate on burning it." hesitantly, John did as he was asked.  
Immediately, the table burst into flames. Dumbledore clapped, before waving his wand to clear the flames.  
"It is not the usual strange things, John. You possess a power held by many as inferior, as the so-called inferior races are the only ones who can use it. You possess the power to perform magic without the use of a wand."  
"What, like goblins?" Dumbledore nodded.  
"According to the goblins, wandless magic is unlike any done with a wand. Where wand magic requires incantations or thoughts, wandless magic is based on feeling and instinct. To burn that table with a wand, you would have had to utter the incantation of _incendio_, but to do it without a wand you simply needed to want it to burn." John nodded slowly, his head reeling. Dumbledore sat down at his desk, forming a steeple with his fingers.  
"No disciplinary action shall be taken, nor will it be taken for the occasional accident. Too many "accidents", however, will result in punishment. You will need to learn to control your emotions, John." John nodded again.  
"Now," said Dumbledore abruptly, "shouldn't you be getting back to class? I believe Professor Flitwick is waiting for you." John hurried out of the room, stopping at the door to utter a quick "thank you, Professor."

"Ah, Mr Potter. You're late." Professor Flitwick did not look pleased. John muttered a quick apology before hurrying to his seat between Harry and Cortana.  
"Today, we will be learning levitation, also known as making objects fly." Everyone started whispering excitedly. John was lost in thought, flexing his hand under the desk. As Flitwick explained the wand movement, John caused a small fireball to form in his hand. Flitwick explained the incantation, but John barely heard him. It was only when Cortana nudged him that he looked up to see everyone else trying the spell. The incantation was so muddled up due to it being said so many times at once that he couldn't even tell what it was.

John thought for a moment, then grinned. He didn't need any incantation, but he'd try it first.

He held his wand in his right hand, pointing it at the feather in front of him. He focused on the feather, muttering the words he thought he heard first.

"Wingar, diamond, leevee, osia!" Cortana sniggered. Not the right words, then. Cortana's feather was already in the air, hovering next to Hermione's. Frustrated, John dropped his wand on the table and held his right hand out, palm facing the feather.

"What do you expect to happen, wandless magic?" Cortana asked with derision. John glanced at her as his feather shot three feet into the air, grinning at her expression.  
"That's not possible!" she exclaimed. she looked around, searching for the person who was levitating it. Everyone else in the room was staring with exactly the same expression as Cortana. Professor Flitwick decided that now was the best time to end the class, and dismissed everyone. As they left, John's feather suddenly burst into flames.  
"Damnit!" he shouted, releasing it and stomping on it as it hit the floor.


	7. Accidents and Revelations

Harry, John, Cortana, Hermione and Ron sat in the armchairs in front of the fire. Everyone else had long since gone to bed, but they just couldn't get over John's newfound power.  
"Go on," Ron urged, "lift something again!"  
John glanced at him.  
"There's something else as well," he began, standing and pacing to the middle of the common room. He held his hand in front of his chest, palm inwards, reversing the magic he had cast in Dumbledore's office. The others stared, amazed, as his robes slowly turned into the green suit of armor.  
Harry gasped.  
"That's the same suit of armor I've seen in my dreams!" John looked at him quickly.  
"Well, almost. The one from my dreams had a helmet." John raised an eyebrow.  
"Like this?" he asked as the helmet reassembled itself around his head. Harry nodded mutely.

* * *

_"They let me pick. Did I ever tell you that? Choose any Spartan I wanted. You know me. I did my research, watched as you became the soldier we needed you to be. Like the others, you were strong, and swift, and brave. But you had something they didn't. Something no-one saw but me."_

_"Can you guess?"_

_"Luck."  
_

* * *

John woke with a start. He sat up, peering around the darkened dormitory. He was the only one awake.  
Pushing the covers aside, he crept down the stairs and into the common room. He was surprised to find Cortana sitting in one of the armchairs, staring into the flames. She looked over at him when he sat in the armchair next to her.

"Do you ever wonder why Harry has a scar and we don't?" she asked. John had never actually thought about it before. When they thought their parents were killed in a car crash, they had always assumed harry had been sitting in the middle and had been hit by some glass. Now that they knew what had really happened, that explanation just didn't fit. Harry had told them he could remember something of the "car crash" if he concentrated. Mostly just a big flash of green light. John, however, couldn't remember that at all. If anything, all he could remember was most likely a figment of his imagination - a giant ring in space, followed by a flash of white light.

"I remember something different to what Harry remembers," Cortana said suddenly. John glanced at her.  
"It sounds crazy, though."  
"Probably not as crazy as what I remember," John replied. Cortana sighed.  
"I remember being in this immense ship - well, the back half of it, anyway - out in space. We were drifting... and it was just you and me, John, and I wasn't even a person, I was a computer program! You were frozen in some kind of preserving tube thing, until we drifted into orbit around earth. Then I woke you up and you flew some kind of space-plane thing down... and then you jumped out with me... and it all went black when you slammed into the ground. No... not black... everything went _white_..."  
"Wow," John replied, "That's a lot different to what I remember, but at the same time, it isn't. I remember a big spaceship too - but it wasn't half a ship, it was whole. There was this massive ring in space - massive as in, things were living on it - and then there was this flash of white light."  
"I remember something else, too," Harry's voice came to their ears from the dormitory stairs.  
"I remember being at the Dursleys, aged about five, and it was just me. I didn't have siblings. Then, next thing you know, _CRASH!_" he mimed something hitting the ground hard.  
"I remember going outside, and there was this big crater in the front yard - you know that hole that appeared overnight, the one Uncle Vernon got really angry about? It looked just like that - and at the bottom of the crater there was this huge person, like, seven feet tall, wearing armor like yours."

John was suddenly struck with a thought.  
"This suit of armor," he began, restoring it from his pyjamas, "it's pretty high-tech."  
"So?" Harry asked. Cortana, however, gasped.  
"It might have a camera in it!" John nodded, grinning. The helmet reassembled itself, and he spoke a command into the small microphone nested in front of his mouth.  
"Activate."

A surge of yellow energy immediately began to run up the exterior of the suit, beginning at John's feet. The inside of the visor lit up, and three holographic displays appeared on it. He focused first on the round one in the bottom left corner. As he turned his head, it turned in sync. Harry shifted uncomfortably, and John immediately saw a yellow dot appear on the display.  
"This thing has a radar!" He exclaimed, "but it can only see things that are moving."  
"A motion tracker," Cortana corrected. The surge reached the helmet, and John noticed the bar filling up at the top of the visor.  
"The energy surge has some kind of... meter," he told them. Cortana stood up as the surge reached the peak of the helmet and faded, before the entire suit flashed gold.  
"I wonder..." she said, reaching toward John. Her hand curled into a fist and struck out toward his chest in a blur of motion.  
When her hand reached roughly an inch away from the chestplate, the suit flashed gold again, the flash lingering this time, and Cortana was flung halfway across the room, landing in a heap. John immediately ran over to her, closely followed by Harry.  
"Deactivate," he muttered, causing the golden light to seem to burst with some kind of electrical sound, the visor readouts to disappear, and the helmet to collapse back into the chestplate. He sank to his knees by Cortana's limp body, quickly turning his armor back into his pyjamas. Harry placed his fingers on her wrist.  
"She's still alive," he announced, sighing with relief. John immediately picked her up, striding toward the portrait hole.  
"Where are you going?" Harry asked.  
"Hospital wing."  
"We can't go wandering around at night!"  
"No-one will see us."  
"How do you know?" John immediately vanished.  
"Wandless magic, bro."

* * *

Madam Pomfrey was not used to being woken up at one o'clock in the morning by a tall first-year cradling his twin sister in his arms, but nevertheless she took it in her stride, leading John to the nearest bed and having him set Cortana down on it. She waved her wand over her a few times, before muttering a few things under her breath as she retrieved some things from a shelf and quickly mixed them into a small phial.  
"You'll want to stay with her, I'd guess?" she asked.  
"If it's not a hassle-" he began before Madam Pomfrey cut him off.  
"Nonsense, Stay as long as you need. When she wakes, make sure she drinks that. She seems to have had a nasty shock - something like a lightning strike, though where that might have happened, I have no idea. She has some broken bones as well, but I'd rather she be awake when I mend them." John simply nodded, looking down at Cortana's sleeping face.  
"Would you like a drink of something? Something to eat? A chair?" John simply shook his head, and Madam Pomfrey shrugged, returning to bed and snuffing out the lamps, plunging the room into darkness. John restored his armor before taking it off and assembling it as it had been in Dumbledore's office. He stood in front of it, clad in his pyjamas (which he had summoned from the dormitory), cupping his hand with his palm upward in front of him. It was easier than breathing to create a fireball hovering above his hand, and almost as simple to dip his right forefinger into the flame and draw it out glowing. He pressed his fingertip onto the middle of the chestplate, seeing a red spot appear on the green metal. A shape came to mind, and he drew it on the metal plate. As soon as he finished the shape, he knew what to do with it.  
John breathed life into the magical glyph, and it immediately ignited, before dying down to a red glow. A bed nearby spontaneously caught fire, and he quickly removed the air from around it to put it out. He _still_ couldn't control that!  
Then he looked at the glyph. It seemed at first to simply be some kind of strange shape, but then he _k__new_ what it said without actually reading it or hearing it.  
"Reclaimer..." he muttered. Cortana stirred, her eyes moving rapidly beneath her eyelids, but John didn't notice. He was to caught in memories which had seemingly sprung into existence out of nowhere as soon as he had uttered the word.  
The _Pillar of Autumn_, the Gravemind, the Flood, the Covenant, the Arbiter, the Ark and the Dawn. Everything he had fought against or fought for. Then Dr. Halsey, ONI, the UNSC, and his training. Everything which had led him to that life. Sgt. Johnson and Cortana. His two friends in a lonely, warriors life of constant fighting.

He was Master Chief Petty Officer John-117, SPARTAN of the UNSC. And yet, he was also John Potter, brother to Cortana and Harry.  
But did he have any say in which life was his?


	8. Max

Cortana opened her eyes. She was in the hospital wing, surrounded by empty beds. She looked to her right, and flinched as she saw John standing right next to her bed, clad in his armor and unmoving. She reached out to tap his armor, and a surge of pain shot through her body, causing her to cry out and black out for a moment.

John jerked, waking up to the sound of Cortana's cry.  
"Cortana?" he asked, causing his helmet to disassemble and retract into his chestplate. She groaned, hanging out of the bed limply. Hurriedly, he lifted her back onto the bed, making sure to check that the yellow energy wasn't still around him. She cried out again as he set her down, this time waking Madam Pomfrey.

"Don't touch her!" she exclaimed, hurrying out into the main room. John stepped back, beginning to explain.  
"John was helping me," Cortana gasped through the pain. He glanced at her before looking at Madam Pomfrey again.  
"Well, mister Potter, I'd suggest you head down to the Great Hall. Breakfast should be about ready by now." John glanced down at Cortana again.  
"I'll have her bones fixed in a jiffy, but you really should be headed downstairs now." He nodded, turning to the door.  
"Mister Potter," Madam Pomfrey called. He turned to face her.  
"You should keep that armor a secret. You are already a target because of your wandless powers, so imagine what that suit of armor would mean!"  
He restored his armor to its robes form, nodded once, and left.

* * *

The Great Hall was far less packed than it would be on a week day. Thankfully, it wasn't a week day, it was Saturday. John took a seat at the Gryffindor table after checking to see if anyone he knew was there. No-one he knew was. He loaded his plate with food and had begun to eat when Professor Dumbledore walked into the Great Hall with Cortana. The two were chatting quite happily as they neared John, but when they saw him they simply stopped.

Cortana sat down at John's side as Professor Dumbledore tapped his arm to get his attention.  
"John, you and I need to speak. You know the way to my office, so I will speak with you there at mid-day." He turned and took a couple of steps before pausing. "I do enjoy mint humbugs," he commented, plucking a couple from their platter on the table.

* * *

John had been trying to get into Dumbledore's office for about an hour already.  
"Sherbet Lemon? Uh... Cheese ball? Chocolate stick? Banana split?" Dumbledore must have been enjoying him shout out the name of every sweet he could think of.  
"For goodness' sake! Mint humbug!" The stone gargoyle began to move, springing aside to allow him to pass.  
"Really?"

"Ah, John. Good of you to join me..." Dumbledore began, checking a clock, "roughly an hour late." John stared.  
"You told me the password," he began, "by telling me you _liked_ a _sweet?_" Dumbledore nodded happily. John shook his head, confused.  
"Now is not the time to discuss my password choices," Dumbledore stated.  
"There is a problem."  
"Did I do something wrong, other than accidentally almost kill my sister?" John asked nervously. He felt that he had already been punished enough for _that_ accident, having had to watch his broken sister in the hospital wing.  
"No. This is something... different. A few days ago, something was spotted flying over the forest. At first we thought it to be a bird. As time passed, however, we were able to distinguish that it was, in fact, a person. A person..." he paused dramatically, "with _wings_."  
John didn't say a word for a moment.

Then he felt a grin begin to emerge on his face, and he burst out laughing.  
"Oh, god, Dumbledore, you _kill_ me!" he exclaimed, struggling to speak through his merriment. The laughter faded, however, as he saw Professor Dumbledore's serious expression.  
"Wait, you're serious?" Dumbledore nodded.  
"We have tried to speak with this person, but every time we approach she simply flies away. We believe she is afraid of us."  
"Who tried to talk to her?" John asked.  
"Professor Quirrell, first," Dumbledore replied, "And then Professor Snape." John chuckled.  
"Snape, I get," he began. That guy could make a giant run away from his greasy hair.  
"But Professor _Quirrel?_" That stuttering, awkward man couldn't hurt a fly, let alone a winged person - it was quite obvious from how he spoke.

"John, I need you to do something for me." John nodded - Dumbledore was finally reaching the point.  
"I need you to go into the Forbidden forest, find this winged girl, and speak with her. Bring her back here if you can, but if you can't then at the very least find out _who_ and _what_ she is."  
"Why me?" John asked. Dumbledore chuckled.  
"Because you are not like Professors Snape and Quirrell."

* * *

A twig snapped as John's foot pressed down upon it. He considered drawing his wand, but decided against it - it was getting dark, and he had no clue how to create a light with his wand.

He knew the girl was nearby - he kept hearing tiny sounds as she moved from tree to tree, but it was too dark for him to spot her. Eventually he cupped his palm, creating a fireball to cast some light on his surroundings, and was rewarded with the sound of the girl drawing in a sharp breath. He grinned - she was definitely watching him.  
He continued walking through the forest, giving off the impression that he had no clue where she was.  
Then a new sound caught his ears. A loud, crashing noise along with the snort of a bull. He heard the trees shuffling as the girl climbed higher, and he turned to face the attacker's onslaught.

From the undergrowth burst a creature with the body of a heavily muscled man - wearing nothing but a dirty, tattered loincloth - with the head of a raging bull. Its red eyes glowed in the light from John's fireball.  
"Well," John said, "aren't you the right of the runespoor?" The minotaur snorted, lowering its head. John jumped to the side as the creature charged.  
"Of course," John said, running after it and somersaulting over its head when it turned to face him, "the right - whoa!" he ducked at it swing its hand at him "- the right head of the runespoor -" he leapt back as it clasped its hands over its head and swung down like a sledgehammer "- doesn't tend to last long!" he flung the fireball at the minotaur's face, distracting it. He followed up by jumping onto its head, bringing it crashing to the ground under his weight. The minotaur snorted, grabbing his leg and flinging him to the side.  
"Right," John muttered, "it's never that easy." He brought his arms into a fighting position, shrugging his shoulders and rolling his head.  
"Bring it on, bull-face." he restored his armor, causing his helmet to assemble as it appeared.  
"Activate," he spoke clearly. The HUD faded in, the shield bar at the top slowly filling with an electronic hum as the yellow energy rushed up the exterior. The minotaur roared at him, stamping its foot and lowering its head. John grinned smugly, running to meet its charge with an incomprehensible cry.

He caught the bull by its horns - literally. Twisting his hands, he forced the minotaur's bull-head into the forest floor and chopped down on its spine with his flattened hand. Paralyzed from the waist down, it collapsed with a roar of defiance. John knelt at its side, returning his armor to robe form and forcing it to look at him.  
"Shut up," he told it, and it quieted.  
"I'm going to help you, but I need you to promise me you'll leave me - and the girl - alone." It snorted, surprised.  
"Yes, I know you weren't after me. Get these words into your potato-sized brain: _Leave. Her. Alone._" The minotaur nodded reluctantly.  
"Good. _Episkey,_" he murmured, drawing his wand and pointing it at the creature's snapped spine. With a sickening _crack_, the minotaur's spine repaired itself.  
"Go on, then, get outta here!" John told it, lifting it to its feet and standing back. It headed for the edge of the small clearing. Turning back, it snorted once - was it _thanking_ him? - and disappeared into the undergrowth.

The sound of fluttering wings caused him to spin on the spot, his wand pointed at the girl who had just landed. He quickly stowed his wand away when he realized she wasn't a threat.  
"Who are you?" the girl asked, folding her easily 13-foot, tan & white, brown-speckled wings. She couldn't be much older than ten, despite her almost 6-foot height. Her brown eyes peeked out from under her brownish-red hair as she asked.  
"My name's John. What's your name?" The girl thought for a moment, screwing up her face as if she was trying to remember something.  
"I'm not sure," she replied, "but I think it's Max."

* * *

**A/N**

**Bet those of you who read this before I changed the description didn't see that one coming!  
Anyway, I need feedback on my stories at the moment. If you have anything to say, review (or PM if you don't want it to be public)  
From now on, any questions from the reviews will be answered before chapters when I post them - I may even ask questions back - but I'm not going to give away any plot twists or other information like that.  
**

**Review! It motivates me!**


	9. Memories of Schools and Wars

_The sound of fluttering wings caused him to spin on the spot, his wand pointed at the girl who had just landed. He quickly stowed his wand away when he realized she wasn't a threat.  
"Who are you?" the girl asked, folding her easily 13-foot, tan & white, brown-speckled wings. She couldn't be much older than ten, despite her almost 6-foot height. Her brown eyes peeked out from under her brownish-red hair as she asked.  
"My name's John. What's your name?" The girl thought for a moment, screwing up her face as if she was trying to remember something.  
"I'm not sure," she replied, "but I think it's Max."_

* * *

John was about to ask _what_ she was when she answered the question herself.  
"I'm a recombinant DNA experiment - ninety-eight per cent human and two per cent avian." That one sentence alone was enough to cause John's head to spin.  
"Uh... could you repeat that in english?"  
"I'm mostly human and part bird." _That_ was easier to get his head around.

"Listen, Max, the forest isn't safe at night - its really never safe. How long was that minotaur after you for?"  
"Ever since I got here." John thought for a moment.  
"Okay, come with me. We're heading back to the school-" Max's eyes widened and she immediately took a step back.  
"The School is what did this to me! I'm not going back there!" she assumed a fighting stance.  
"Calm down, Max, I think we're talking about two completely different schools."  
"Then what school are you talking about?" she asked suspiciously.  
"Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry." She stared at John for a moment.  
"A magic school?" John nodded. A twig snapped behind him.

"Potter," a voice sneered behind him. Max's eyes widened even more and she turned on her heels, preparing to run.  
"_I__ncarcerous!_" Snape shouted. Thick ropes shot out of his wand, binding Max's arms, legs and wings.  
"Hey!" John shouted, "that really wasn't necessary! We were talking!"  
"Out of my way, Potter. My job is to get this _creature_ back to Hogwarts, and I'm not letting a first-year like yourself stop me." Snape stepped forward, preparing to pick Max up and carry her to the castle. John stepped in front of him.  
"I said _out of my way_, Potter!" John shook his head.  
"I'm protecting her. If she doesn't like you, there's got to be a reason. Who knows, maybe it's your greasy hair?"  
"_Repello!_" John felt himself being thrown backward. He whipped his wand out.  
"_Arresto momentum!_" He pointed his wand at the canopy above Snape's head, shouting "_Incarcifors!_"  
The treetops above Snape's head became a cage, which fell onto Snape, trapping him neatly.  
"_Potter!_"

John knelt by Max's side, turning his robes into his armor. He drew his combat knife from its sheath, causing Max to whimper in fear.  
"Keep still," John told her, "I don't want to accidentally cut you." He inserted the knife beneath one of the ropes, pulling it sharply up to cut it.  
"Isn't there a... I don't know, less _dangerous_ way to get rid of these ropes?" John nodded.  
"There is, but I'd rather not try," he replied.  
"Why?"  
"Because my spells tend to go wrong." He indicated Snape, whose cage was already starting to return to being leaves.  
"He's almost out! Just do it, already!" John nodded, brandishing his wand at the ropes.  
"_Relashio!_" the ropes disappeared. Sheathing his knife, he helped her up.  
"Can you fly?" he asked.  
"I think so..."  
"Ok then, head north," he told her, checking the suit's internal compass, "for about ten miles. You'll see a castle there - land outside the forest, and I'll meet you there."  
"What about greasy-hair over there?"  
"Don't worry. I can run faster than anyone I know - including Snape."

Max nodded, spreading her wings and taking off. John checked Snape, who had almost freed himself. He pulled out his wand.  
"_Relashio_," he muttered, pointing it at Snape and sprinting off in the direction of the castle.

* * *

John was halfway to the castle, dodging trees as he ran, when he reached a dead end. Trees were surrounding him in an impenetrable wall, Snape was hot on his heels, and there was really only one thing he could do. He leapt into the air - a jump of around ten feet - and quickly rotated the armor ability display to jetpack.

From the bottom of the backpack-like bulge on the back of his suit erupted two jets of blue flame, hurling him up above the trees in an instant. He saw Max flying just ahead of him, and switched to a different module - one which looked much like the jetpack.  
This time, the flames erupted on an angle, forcing him to point his head forward, before simply acting like the jetpack - that is, giving him a massive burst of speed. Surprisingly, the armor abilities appeared to not be running out at all, despite what Cortana had told him on the _Dawn_, so long ago. He easily passed Max, slowing down on jetpack mode to allow her to keep up.

"Really? a jetpack? Why didn't you use that in the first place?" She shouted over the noise of the thrusters.  
"Because I thought it wouldn't last long!" he replied, beginning to move forward again.

Eventually, the two of them landed outside the main doors. John returned his armor to being robes, and quickly made Max and himself invisible.  
"How did you do that?" Max whispered.  
"Magic," he replied.  
He pushed the large door open, letting Max pass before closing it behind them. He led her through the passages, taking secret ones he had already found, heading for Dumbledore's office. He was so concerned with remembering the way that he didn't even notice Filch was in front of him until he cannoned into him. He fell over backward, losing his concentration and making the two of them visible again.

"First years out of bed, I see." Filch noted, grinning - which made him look even uglier.  
"Dear, dear, we _are_ in trouble..." He seemed to be enjoying the prospect of John getting punished.  
"I need to speak to Professor Dumbledore," John replied, gripping Max's hand reassuringly, "He sent me to the forest to find this girl."  
"Hah! A likely story." Filch barked.  
"Indeed it is, Argus," an old voice said from behind him. He spun around to see Professor Dumbledore walking up to him, his wand lit.  
"I sent John to the Forbidden forest to find this girl after Severus and Quirinus were unable to speak with her."  
"Snape-"  
"_Professor_ Snape, John," Dumbledore interrupted.  
"Sorry, _Professor_ Snape was there, too. He tried to bring Max here by force." Dumbledore looked disappointed.  
"Severus should not have been there. He was ordered not to go, but he was persistent."  
"Am I allowed to punish these two or not?" Filch asked irritably.  
"You may not punish John, as he is out of bed with good reason, and you may not punish this girl - Max - because she is not a Hogwarts student at this time." Filch turned and left, muttering something about "back in my day..."

As John, Max and Dumbledore returned to Dumbledore's office, Dumbledore muttered "_nox,_" extinguishing his wand. He turned to face them and opened with the question John knew he would open with.  
"Max, I need to know exactly what you are," he said kindly, his tone taking any insult out of his words. Max sighed.  
"I explained that to John, but he didn't understand." She replied. Dumbledore sat behind his desk, his fingers forming a steeple below his twinkling eyes.  
"I think you'll find that, as an old Professor, I know a thing or two more than an eleven-year-old first-year student."  
"Okay then..."

John sat in one of the two chairs which Dumbledore had conjured, listening to Max as she began to explain.  
"I never knew my parents," she began.  
"I grew up in a laboratory called the School. It was a horrible place - most of my life was spent in a dog crate. I'm not even sure it was there that they combined my DNA with a bird's - I don't know if they did it before I was born or after. Every day they made me and the other... experiments -" she said the word distastefully, "- run all sorts of tests."

"What manner of 'tests' are we talking about, exactly?" Dumbledore asked, interrupting.

"In one of them we had to run through a metal maze as fast as we could. If we didn't beat our best time they electrified the maze. We had to do it over and over again - without anything to eat or drink, and with about a minute to rest as they rearranged the maze."

John shot to his feet the instant he heard the word 'electrified'.

"How old were you when they first made you do this?" he asked. She looked at him - the only person who could actually look straight at him other than Hagrid - and he saw the pain behind her brown eyes.  
"I don't know," she whispered, "as long as I can remember."  
He crossed the space between them in a single stride, pulling her into a hug.  
"They'll never do that to you again. Not while I'm around," he told her.  
"You'd protect someone you barely know with your own life?" John looked at her.  
"No," he told her, "but I know what it's like to spend your childhood in an inescapable prison, being tortured every day."  
She looked into his eyes."Someone as young as you," she began,  
"shouldn't have such old eyes."  
Dumbledore cleared his throat.  
"John," he began, "is there something you haven't told us?" John nodded.

"Yes. After the... incident... last night, I was standing next to Cortana when a shape appeared in my mind. I drew it on my chestplate, and it really didn't make sense until I really looked at it." He restored his armor, showing Dumbledore the glowing red glyph on the front of the chestplate.  
"What does it mean?" Dumbledore asked.  
"A word which had meaning to no-one in this time but Cortana and me."  
"What word?"  
"Reclaimer. I whispered the word, and so many memories came flooding into my head. Memories of a different time, a different place."  
"A different time?"  
"twenty-five fifty-two. The fall of Reach. Halo. Then I was called Master Chief Petty Officer John-117. I had no last name but a three digit number. I had no family but my SPARTAN comrades, and they had just died. Hundreds of the greatest soldiers ever produced, massacred by the Covenant. The UNSC _Pillar of Autumn_ made a blind slip-space jump in accordance with the Cole Protocol, arriving at a ringworld which we called Halo. We fought the Covenant to the control room, where we found out that the ring was a weapon intended to kill all life in the galaxy, and I destroyed it.

then, much later, crash landing on Earth." He chuckled softly. "It's really not fun falling from the upper atmosphere with nothing but this suit to protect yourself. Then, some stuff went down and I ended up destroying another ring on a construction called the ark - the ring was really the same one rebuilt, so I guess I blew up the same ring twice - and then Cortana and I tried to escape on the UNSC _Forward Unto Dawn_. The portal closed on the ship, cutting it in half, and we were left drifting. I went into cryosleep.

Cortana woke me up much later, and we came back to Earth on a faulty Pelican drop-ship which I had to, again, jump out of with nothing but the suit to protect me."

"How long ago was this?"  
John looked at him.  
"I landed on Harry's doorstep about a year ago. I had a vision of some really ugly woman who said something about changing Cortana and me, and changing the memories of pretty much everyone in the world."

"How does this have anything to do with me? And if you're the perfect soldier, why didn't you kill that minotaur?"  
"I was kidnapped at the age of six and brought to a laboratory where they augmented my body and had me run tests every day. I tore my achilles tendon after running about a hundred miles per hour - and I received medical attention for it, and then punishment."  
"You received a punishment for hurting yourself?" John looked at her sharply.  
"It's not as bad as being punished for moving a little bit too slow."  
She looked down.  
"Maybe. But your life was filled with war. You never had a chance to relax, did you?"  
"I wasn't supposed to."

Dumbledore cleared his throat again.  
"A minotaur?" he asked.  
"It was hunting Max," John replied.  
"I took it down, broke its spine, then extracted a promise from it never to hurt Max or myself ever again. After that, I healed its spine and let it leave. Max landed after that, then Snape showed up."

The door to Dumbledore's office burst open, allowing Snape to enter.  
"Speak of the devil..." John muttered.  
"Headmaster, this student attacked me as I was doing my job," Snape began.  
"A job which I ordered you to abandon, if I remember correctly," Dumbledore replied.  
"John was looking for young Max, here, as you and Quirinus had trouble with even contacting her."  
"I will not stand for first-year students attacking me!" Snape exclaimed.  
"Then sit," John replied, turning back to Dumbledore.  
"Professor, what will happen to Max now?"

"If I could, I would send Max to London on the Hogwarts Express. I believe Molly Weasley would be happy enough taking her in. Unfortunately, the Hogwarts Express doesn't arrive back here until Christmas, so I'm afraid Max must stay at Hogwarts."  
"Where would she stay?"  
"Well, as it was a Gryffindor who brought her here, and since Gryffindors are known to be selfless, I should expect she would be welcome to stay in the Gryffindor house dormitory."  
Max nodded slowly.  
"Well, now that that's sorted, the two of you should head to bed. It's getting quite late."  
John and Max looked at one another, then turned and walked out of Dumbledore's office, past a livid Snape, and headed in the direction of Gryffindor Tower.

* * *

**A/N**

**Yay! longest chapter I've ever written - 2460 words, not including this author's note!  
**

**Anyway, I'd just like to repeat what I said last chapter - Let me know if you have any ideas, questions, or just general comments, either in a review or in a PM. I have no plot plan for this story or any other story I write. The only real plan for this story is a battered copy of _Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone_, and that's only so I can remember certain key events that I really don't want to change much. **

**Other than that, I just want to thank everyone who has stuck with this story so far.**

**Hopefully, I'll get another update out soon!**

**- Chris**


	10. Potions and Flying

Surprisingly, it wasn't just the whole of Gryffindor tower just seemed to accept that a strange, ten-year-old girl had appeared in the middle of the night - the entire _school_ seemed to simply accept it and move on.

Max sat with John, Harry, Cortana, Ron and Hermione that morning. They bombarded her with questions, and she answered most of them without mentioning her wings or the School. The other questions she simply shook her head at, muttering "later."  
She piled her plate high with food and began to eat. John gaped at her.

She was eating even more than he did. He filled his own plate and began to eat when she caught him staring.  
"I haven't eaten in..." she counted on her fingers, "about five days." Immediately, Cortana stopped eating and stared at Max.  
"_Five_ _days?_ Geez, even the Dursleys weren't that harsh. At the least we got at least a couple of berries a day." Ron and Hermione stared at all of them now.  
_"_No food for five days, and a couple of berries a day?" Hermione began, concern evident in her voice.  
"A couple of berries between us at one point, if I remember correctly," Cortana commented, "the Dursleys were _really_ annoyed after Dudley ended up in that brazilian boa constrictor's enclosure."  
"As bad as that sounds, Max has had it even worse if she hasn't eaten in five days. Where did you live before John found you?" Hermione asked.  
"I'll tell you later. I'd rather not tell everyone in this..." she hesitated, "... school about my past."  
After that, everyone simply dropped the issue.

After they had finished their breakfast - Max ate another two plates of food, telling them she needed at least three thousand calories a day - the group headed out to the lake.  
After checking that she was out of sight of everyone but John, Cortana, Harry, Ron and Hermione, Max allowed herself to relax. Hermione was preparing to ask her about the pair of hand-cut slits in the back of her clothing when Max sat down, spreading her wings.  
John chuckled at their flabbergasted expressions.  
"Yup, I've got wings. Next question?" Max said simply.

"How?" Hermione asked, sitting down on the other side of from where John was sitting.  
"The School," she spat into the lake. "A secret research facility. They mixed my DNA with a bird's - don't ask me which bird, I don't know - and ran all sorts of horrible tests like an electric maze."  
"How long were you there?" Cortana asked, her unreadable expression hiding her sympathy.  
"As long as I can remember - and I have a really good memory."  
"How did you escape?" John asked. Max frowned.

"It was actually really weird. The dog cage I was held in-" Hermione gasped, interrupting.  
"They kept you in a _dog cage?_" Max nodded.  
"Anyway, I kind of just put my hand on the door - you know, like leaning on it - and the lock sparked and it flew open. I didn't question it, I just made a break for it. As soon as I got outside, I flew away. I've been running ever since."  
Hermione nodded thoughtfully.

"When did you arrive in the forest?"  
"About a day before John fought off that minotaur and found me." Ron stared at John.  
"You fought off a _minotaur?_"  
"With his bare hands. He could have killed it, too, but he didn't," Max told him.  
"Bloody hell, John, that's a hard fight even for you!" John just shrugged.  
"He wasn't that tough. One chop to the spine and he was down like a sack of potatoes."  
"_Bloody hell_."

* * *

Potions lessons took place in one of the dungeons. John shivered - not only was it colder down here than other places in the castle, it also would have been creepy enough _without_ all the pickled animals floating in glass jars on the walls.  
"You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making," Snape began. His smooth voice was almost a whisper, but they all caught every word. He had the gift of keeping a class silent without visible effort.  
"As there is little foolish wand-waving in this class, many of you will struggle to believe this is magic. I don't expect you will truly understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of that creep through human veins, bewitching the senses..."  
_wow_, John thought, _I never would have thought Snape was a poet._  
"I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death - if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach."

As the lesson continued, Snape put them into pairs and set them to mixing a simple potion to cure boils. He was just telling everyone to look at the perfect way Draco Malfoy had stewed his horned slugs when Cortana abruptly interrupted him.  
"_Neville!_ Don't add the quills yet!" Neville Longbottom jumped as she spoke, hurriedly dropping the quills back onto the desk next to him. Snape turned to look as Cortana hurried over to Neville from where she had been standing next to John.  
"What are you doing, Potter?" he asked sharply as Cortana lifted Neville's cauldron off of the fire.  
"Sorry, Professor. I was just stopping Neville from causing a disaster."

Snape glanced at Neville's cauldron, seeing the porcupine quills Neville had been about to add, and took five points from Gryffindor for interrupting him.

As the friends climbed the steps out of the dungeons after the lesson, Max - who had been sitting on the main stairs, waiting for them - bounded up to them.  
"How was it?" she asked brightly.  
"Snape is probably the meanest teacher," John began, "_ever_."  
"Well, at least he's not these 'Dursley' people you told me about."  
Harry grimaced.  
"Something tells me that Snape could make the Dursleys look like kittens."

* * *

John, Cortana and Harry didn't hate many people at Hogwarts - but the one student they hated the most was Draco Malfoy, the snide, arrogant Slytherin who was never seen without his two giant, dim-witted friends Crabbe and Goyle. Still, Potions classes were the only ones they had with the Slytherins, so they didn't have to put up with him _too_ much - that is, until flying lessons started. Gryffindor and Slytherin were learning together.  
"Typical," said Harry darkly, "just what I wanted. The chance to make a fool of myself in front of Malfoy."  
"Who says you're going to make a fool of yourself? Cortana and I have far more experience with falling than flying." Cortana glanced at John as he spoke, and he knew she had remembered their past life as well.  
"So do I, remember?" Harry replied, "my feet have never left the ground unless it was because I was falling."  
"Except for that one time when you ended up on the cafeteria roof," Cortana said, giggling slightly.  
"I _still_ have no idea how that happened."

At three-thirty that afternoon, Harry, John, Cortana, Ron and Hermione along with the other Gryffindors hurried down the front steps into the grounds for their first flying lesson. It was a clear, breezy day and the grass rippled under their feet as they walked down the sloping lawns towards a smooth patch of ground on the other side of the grounds to the Forbidden forest.  
The Slytherins were already there, and so were twenty broomsticks lying in neat lines on the ground. Max, who had followed them to watch, settled herself down on a small rise close by as their teacher, Madam Hooch, arrived. Her yellow eyes focused on every student's face as she introduced herself.  
"Well, what are you all waiting for?" she barked. "Everyone stand by a broomstick. Come on, hurry up."  
John glanced down at his broom at the same time as Cortana and Harry. It was made of a dark wood, which he identified as rosewood - an odd choice, considering its weight - and the twigs were almost all straight. Cortana's was a quite light wood, possibly ash - again, quite heavy for a flying object - and some of the twigs were bent. Harry's was made of oak wood, but it looked worn, and most of its twigs stuck out at odd angles.

"Stick your right hand over your broom," Madam Hooch called, "and say: 'Up!'"  
"UP!" everyone shouted.  
Harry's and John's leapt into their hands immediately, John's doing so with considerable force. Almost everyone else's didn't. Hermione's simply rolled over, Neville's didn't move at all, and John had to fight back a snort of laughter when Ron's only lifter its handle, hitting him in the face. John and Harry glanced at one another.  
"Just say it confidently, Cortana," John said encouragingly.  
"Up!" Cortana said by way of reply, and the broom flew upward into her hand.

Madam Hooch then showed them how to mount their brooms without sliding off the end, and walked up and down the rows, correcting their grips. The friends were delighted when Madam Hooch told Malfoy he'd been doing it wrong for years. She stopped in front of John.  
"Are you sure you've never ridden a broom before, mister Potter?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.  
"Yup," John replied confidently.  
"Well," she said, "that _is_ a surprise, considering your perfect grip."  
"I just did what felt natural, ma'am."  
After she had finished, Madam Hooch strode back to the front.

"When I blow my whistle, you will kick off from the ground, hard," Madam Hooch began. "Keep your brooms steady, hover for a moment, and then lean forwards slightly and touch back down. On my whistle - three - two -"  
But Neville, nervous, jumpy and frightened, pushed off before the whistle even touched Madam Hooch's lips.  
"Come down, boy!" she shouted, but Neville was off, shooting forward like a cork from a bottle. John ducked as Neville shot right at him, narrowly passing over his head. Neville began to corkscrew as he lost control, clipping Max's shoulder as he hurtled past her. Eventually, he crashed into the ground a few feet away from where he had taken off, and John could hear the sickening crack Neville's wrist made over the splintering wood of the ruined broomstick.

Madam Hooch was at Neville's side beofre anyone could blink, her face as white as his.  
"Come on, boy, up you come," she said, helping Neville stand. He whimpered, cradling his hand.  
"Broken wrist," she murmured.  
She turned to the rest of the class.  
"All of you, keep your feet firmly on the ground while I take this boy to the hospital wing!" She began to hurry Neville towards the castle.  
"And if I see a _single_ broom in the air," she shouted at them, already halfway to the doors , "the one riding it will find themself out of Hogwarts before you can say 'Quidditch.'"

As soon as they were out of earshot Malfoy let loose a bark of laughter.  
"Did you see his face, the great lump?" The other Slytherins joined in, and John caught sight of Max walking over, her face filled with the kind of calm that was more terrifying than rage.  
"Look!" Malfoy exclaimed, picking up Neville's Remembrall from where it had fallen, "Longbottom's Remembrall!"  
"Give it here, Malfoy," Harry said threateningly. He and John stepped forweard, facing Malfoy.  
"How about... No. I'll leave it somewhere for Longbottom to collect." He leapt onto his broomstick and took off, shouting back. "Up a tree, perhaps?"  
Max looked about ready to spread her wings and take off after him as John shook his head at her and jumped onto his own broom a second after Harry jumped onto his.  
"No!" Hermione shouted. "Madam Hooch said to stay on the ground - you'll get us all into trouble!" Harry and John ignored her, shooting off like a pair of rockets.  
"They've always been a bit... headstrong," Cortana told Hermione.  
"Yeah, well, if they get expelled they can't say I didn't warn them."

Harry was a natural at flying, even with a rather beaten up old broom. John, on the other hand, was slightly unsteady. Nevertheless, the assembled students below were staring at both of them admiringly.  
"Give it here, Malfoy, or I'll knock you off your broom!" Harry called.  
"Oh yeah?" Malfoy replied, slightly uncertainly.  
"Allow me," John said to Harry, hurtling off toward Malfoy like a bullet from a gun. He missed Malfoy, who swerved sharply to avoid him, but succeeded in catching his jaw with his fist. That glancing blow was enough to cause Malfoy to lose balance for long enough to send the Remembrall spinning off behind him.  
Harry shot past John, a black-haired meteor as he dived toward the spinning glass ball.


	11. The Midnight Duel

_"Allow me," John said to Harry, hurtling off toward Malfoy like a bullet from a gun. He missed Malfoy, who swerved sharply to avoid him, but succeeded in catching his jaw with his fist. That glancing blow was enough to cause Malfoy to lose balance for long enough to send the Remembrall spinning off behind him._

_Harry shot past John, a black-haired meteor as he dived toward the spinning glass ball._

* * *

"You'll pay for that, Potter!" Malfoy shouted, drawing his wand. John watched as Malfoy pointed the small stick of wood at him, shouting some incantation John would never remember. From the tip of Malfoy's wand burst a black iron ball, which John judged to be about ten inches in diameter. As the ball hurtled toward him, he did the first thing he could think of: he wandlessly created a heavy wooden bat, swinging it around his head, and hit the ball straight back at Malfoy, who quickly shouted another spell, this time causing the ball to explode into a shower of iron shards which rained like black snow to the grass below.

By that time, Harry had caught the Remembrall and landed triumphantly. John turned and shot back to the ground, landing nearby.  
"John..." Cortana murmured, standing next to him, "I think McGonagall isn't very happy..."  
"HARRY AND JOHN POTTER!" Professor McGonagall screamed, running toward them. John glanced at Harry, whose grin had faded faster than he had just dived to catch the Remembrall.  
"_Never_ - in all my time at Hogwarts -"  
McGonagall was almost speechless in shock.  
"- how _dare_ you - might have fallen, might have broken your neck -"  
"It wasn't their fault, Professor -"  
"Be quiet, Miss Patil -"  
"But Malfoy -"  
"That's _enough_, Mr Weasley. Potter, Potter, follow me, now"  
Harry and John glimpsed Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle's triumphant faces on the way back to the school. They were going to be expelled. John wanted to speak up, to mention Malfoy's involvement, to say _something_ in their defense, but the words just wouldn't come. They'd be packing their bags in ten minutes.  
McGonagall stopped outside a classroom. She opened the door and poked her head inside.  
"Excuse me, Professor Flitwick, could I borrow Wood for a moment?"  
Harry and John glanced at one another, both wondering whether Wood was a cane of some description. A burly, fifth-year boy came out of Flitwick's class looking confused.  
"Follow me, you three," McGonagall said, marching on up the corridor.  
"In here." They strode into an empty classroom.  
"Harry, John, this is Oliver Wood. Wood - I know Weasley wanted to leave, and we're already down a Seeker. I believe I have just solved both problems."  
Wood's expression changed from puzzlement to delight.  
"Are you serious, Professor?"  
"Absolutely," McGonagall replied. "The boys are naturals. Never seen anything like them. Was that your fist time on a broomstick, boys?" They nodded in unison.  
"Harry caught that Remembrall in his hand after a fifty-foot dive, didn't even scratch himself. Charlie Weasley couldn't have done it. And John hit a Bludger sent at him by Draco Malfoy straight back at the boy almost faster than I could follow - it certainly almost hit him before he cast a spell to explode it."  
Wood looked as if all his dreams had come true at once.  
"Ever seen a game of Quidditch?" he asked excitedly.  
"Wood is captain of the Gryffindor team," McGonagall explained.  
"Just the build for a Seeker and a Beater, too," Wood said, walking around them.  
"Light - speedy - and heavy and strong. They'll need decent brooms, Professor - a couple of Nimbus Two Thousands wouldn't hurt."  
"I shall speak to Professor Dumbledore and see if we can't bend the first-year rule. Heaven knows, we need a better team than last year. _Flattened_ in that last match by Slytherin, I couldn't look Severus Snape in the eye for weeks..."  
McGonagall turned to them.  
"I want to hear you're training hard, boys, or I may change my mind about punishing you."  
She suddenly smiled.  
"Your father would have been proud," she said, "he was an excellent Quidditch player himself."

* * *

"You're _joking_. _Seeker and Beater?_" John and Harry nodded, their mouths full of food.  
"But first-years _never_ - you two must be the youngest house player in about -"  
"- a century," Harry finished as John continued to consume his food at a fast rate. Cortana secretly thought John was competing against Max, who managed to consistently eat more than anyone else at the table every meal time.  
"We start training next week," Harry said, "but don't tell anyone. Wood wants to keep it a secret." Fred and George Weasley suddenly hurried over.  
"Well done," George said in a low voice, "Wood told us. Fred's on the team too - he's the other Beater."  
"I tell you, we're going to win that Quidditch Cup for sure this year," Fred chipped in. "Haven't won since Charlie left, but this year's team is going to be brilliant. You two must be good, Wood was almost skipping when he told us."  
The twins had just disappeared when Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle showed up.  
"Having a last meal, Potters? When are you getting on the train back to the Muggles?" John swung his fist at Malfoy, stopping short an inch in front of his face. Malfoy flinched.  
"A lot braver now you're on the ground, aren't you, Malfoy?" John said sarcastically. Malfoy huffed, heading over to the Slytherin table. Crabbe and Goyle lingered for a moment longer. John stood up suddenly, looking down on the two massive boys.  
"Boo."

Harry glanced at the piece of paper in his hand.

_Potter_

_You think you're so tough with your brother to back you up?  
Meet me in the trophy room at midnight. Wizard's duel - wands only,  
no contact. Bring two others. TELL NO-ONE ELSE._

_Draco Malfoy_

"Guys, Malfoy dropped this into my hand." Harry showed them the note. John immediately gripped Harry's shoulder.  
"If you go, I'm coming with you," he told him. Harry nodded.  
"We'll all go," Cortana said. Ron nodded, as did Max. Hermione looked furious.  
"You can't! If someone were to catch you..."  
Ron glanced at the others.  
"Call me crazy, but I had a feeling she'd say that."

* * *

"Half past eleven," Ron said, checking his watch. "We'd better go."  
The group crept through the darkened hallways, expecting to run into the caretaker, Filch, or his cat, Mrs Norris, at every turn. They reached the trophy room at twelve exactly. The minutes ticked by.  
"Sniff around, my sweet, they might be lurking in a corner."  
"This way!" Harry mouthed to the others, and they followed him down a long gallery full of suits of armor. John found himself studying each one as he passed, trying to find resemblances to his own suit. The sounds of Filch came nearer, and John began to shake. He didn't want to get caught. The carpet behind him caught fire suddenly.  
"THERE THEY ARE!" Filch screamed, trying to put out the flames.  
"RUN!" Harry shouted and the five of them sprinted down the gallery, not looking back to see if Filch was following. They slammed into a door - a locked door.  
"We're done for!" Ron moaned.  
"Move over!" Cortana exclaimed, hearing Filch's footsteps coming nearer.  
"_Alohomora!_" The lock clicked and they tumbled into the room behind it. John had the presence of mind to close the door behind him - right before Filch rounded the corner.

"Where did they go!" Filch moaned, turning and hurrying back the way he came. "Maybe they knew about the passage to the fourth floor hallway..."  
"He's gone," John muttered, relieved. "Let's get out of here." He opened the door.  
"Guys?" He turned to look at them.

And he saw what they had been staring at silently.  
He was looking straight into the eyes of an enormous dog, a dog which filled the whole space between the floor and the ceiling. Dimly he remembered a Greek myth regarding a three-headed-dog called Cerberus, but his mind ignored the information in favor of letting his actions do the talking.  
"Run, guys!" He shouted, summoning his armor and conjuring a pair of fireballs. "I'll hold the bugger off!" His shout roused the others from their stupor, and they hurried out the door. The dog struck at Max, and John's hands knew exactly what to do, crossing his arms in front of his face and creating a barrier of light between Max and the creature.  
"Go!" He followed Max out of the door, hurling fireballs every time the dog got too close. Harry slammed the door shut as soon as he passed through it, and Cortana shouted  
"_Colloportus!_"  
The dog's head thumped against the door as they sprinted back to Gryffindor tower.

* * *

"Did you guys see what is was standing on?" Cortana asked breathlessly, pacing up and down the common room.  
"The floor?" Harry suggested. "I think most of us were a bit busy with the _three_ heads to notice its feet!"  
"I was too busy figuring out how to fight the thing," John chipped in. Cortana glared at him for a moment, before her eyes softened.  
"Trust you to think of that first... Anyway, it was standing on a trapdoor. Which means..." She stopped pacing.  
"It's guarding something," John finished.  
"Exactly." Harry sat up suddenly.  
"Vault seven hundred and thirteen!" The others stared at him.  
"Remember? Hagrid took us to get some money from Gringotts-"  
"Vault six hundred and eighty-seven," Cortana interjected.  
"Exactly. But we also went to another vault, remember? Vault seven hundred and thirteen, a high security vault - and it had nothing in it except for a package about the size of a golden snitch."

The others glanced at one another.  
"What did Hagrid say about Gringotts?" Harry asked, racking his brains for the exact words.  
"_Ain't no safer place. Not one. Except perhaps Hogwarts,_" Cortana recited, putting on a Hagrid-esque voice.

"I think we just found out where that package is."


	12. Halo-ween

Malfoy couldn't believe his eyes when he saw that they were all still at Hogwarts the next day, tired but cheerful. John glanced at Malfoy, concentrating on his blond hair. An instant later, Malfoy's hair was a fluorescent pink.  
By that morning, they all agreed that meeting the cerberus was an excellent adventure - and they were quite keen to have another one. Cortana, however, was too focussed on what the package could be to feel elated about their survival.  
"It's either _incredibly_ valuable or _incredibly_ dangerous..." she murmured over her half-eaten breakfast. John glanced at her.  
"Or both," he replied, stopping eating for a moment. All they knew was that it was about two inches in diameter, so they couldn't figure it out without more information. Her train of thought, however, was cut off by the arrival of two long, thin packages carried by six owls each in the morning post. Harry and John were somehow unsurprised when the owls dropped the packages in front of them, followed by two letters from another two owls a moment later. They opened the letters first, which was lucky, as they said:

_DO NOT OPEN THE PARCEL AT THE TABLE.  
It contains your new Nimbus Two Thousand,  
but I don't want everybody knowing you've  
got a broomstick or they'll all want one.  
Oliver Wood will meet you tonight on the  
Quidditch pitch at seven o'clock for your  
first training session._

_Professor M. McGonagall_

"A Nimbus Two Thousand!" Ron moaned enviously. "I've never even _touched_ one."  
"Well, now you can touch two," Cortana replied smugly, handing Ron the second note.

They left the Hall quickly, wanting to unwrap the broomsticks in private before the first lesson, but halfway across the Entrance Hall they found the way upstairs barred by Crabbe and Goyle. Malfoy seized the package from Harry and felt it.  
"That's a broomstick," he said, throwing it back to Harry. "You'll be for it this time, Potter, first-years aren't allowed them."  
Ron couldn't resist getting in a jab at Malfoy.  
"It's not just any broomstick, it's a Nimbus Two Thousand. What did you say you've got at home, Malfoy, a Comet Two Sixty?" Ron grinned at Harry. "Comets look flashy, but they're not in the same league as the Nimbus."  
"What would you know about it, Weasley, you couldn't afford half the handle," Malfoy spat back. "I suppose you and your brothers have to save up, twig by twig."  
Before Ron could answer, Professor Flitwick appeared next to John. Of course, he only reached his hip due to his small stature, but the presence of a teacher calmed the oncoming storm like a charm - ironic, since Flitwick was the Charms teacher.  
"Not arguing, I hope, boys?" he squeaked. Cortana and Max cleared their throats.  
"And girls," he hastily amended.  
"Potter and Potter have been sent broomsticks, Professor" Malfoy said quickly.  
"Yes, yes, that's right," Flitwick said, beaming at Harry and John. "Professor McGonagall told me all about the special circumstances. What model are they?"  
"Nimbus Two Thousands, sir," they replied, fighting down laughter at the look of horror on Malfoy's face. "And it's really thanks to Malfoy here that we have them," John added. That was the final straw. Max and Ron howled with laughter as they headed upstairs, Harry and John sniggered, and Cortana was laughing so hard there were tears in her eyes.

As seven o'clock drew neared, Harry and John left the castle and set off towards the Quidditch pitch. Hundreds of seats were raised high in stands around the pitch so that the spectators were high enough to see what was going on. At either end of the pitch were three golden hoops at different heights raised on slender poles. As Wood strode onto the pitch, lugging a large wooden crate along with him - ha ha, Wood's carrying something made of wood - Harry and John prepared to fly. Harry's broomstick was your standard Nimbus Two Thousand - slender, polished, and immaculate - where John's was clearly a modified variant to account for his larger weight. The handle was thicker, and the middle actually had a leather saddle on it - John supposed it was harder to stay on a thicker broom than on a thinner one. the rear of the broom had two hook-like structures, which he eventually figured out were footrests. The twigs, instead of being the dark brown of Harry's broom, were instead black. Wood greeted them as he neared.

"Right," Wood began. "Quidditch is easy enough to understand, even if it's not so easy to play. There are seven players on each team. Three Chasers, one Keeper, two Beaters, and a Seeker.  
This ball is called the Quaffle," Wood said, picking up a bright red leather ball about the size of a football - with several indents in it, which John correctly guessed were to aid grip.  
"The Chasers throw the Quaffle to each other and try to get it through one of the hoops to score a goal. Ten points every time the Quaffle goes through one of the hoops. The Keeper's job is to fly around the hoops and stop the other team from scoring. I'm the Gryffindor Keeper. Now, here's where we get to your job, John."  
He handed John a small club - much like the bat John had created to hit the black ball back at Malfoy.  
"I'm going to show you what the Bludgers do," Wood said. "These are the Bludgers." He indicated two black balls which were strapped down securely into the box. They resembled exactly the ball that Malfoy had summoned - and they were clearly trying to escape the box.  
"Stand back," Wood warned. He bent down and touched a button by one of the Bludgers, releasing it. The ball shot straight up into the air as if it were fired from a cannon. It shot straight at John, who swung the bat at it as hard as he could. He timed his swing perfectly, sending the ball flying straight through one of the stands and causing a large amount of destruction.  
"Whoops," he said, grinning. Wood grinned as well.  
"I see why Professor McGonagall recommended you." The Bludger hurtled back at Wood, and John launched himself in front of it, activating his armor. The Bludger tore through the shields, and he was surrounded in yellow sparks as it collided with his chestplate. The titanium alloy was more than a match for the iron Bludger, however, and he was simply thrown onto his back. He forced the Bludger back into its spot and Wood tightened the straps, immobilizing it.  
"Anyway," Wood continued, "the Bludgers rocket around trying to knock players off their brooms. The Beaters' job is to protect their team from the Bludgers and try to knock them towards the other team."  
"Have the Bludgers ever killed anyone?" Harry asked nervously.  
"Not at Hogwarts. We've had a couple of broken jaws but nothing worse than that. Now, Harry, this is where you come in. The Seeker doesn't have to worry about the Quaffle or the Bludgers -"  
"Leave those balls of iron to me," John interjected. Wood nodded at him. He reached into the crate and pulled out the fourth - and last - ball. It was small, roughly two inches in diameter, and it appeared to be made of pure gold. The most striking feature, however, was the two, fluttering silver wings. Harry recognized it at once - it was on the cover of _Quidditch through the Ages_, a book he had gotten out of the library the night before.  
"_This_," Wood said dramatically, "is the Golden Snitch. It's the most important ball of them all. It's the Seeker's job to catch it before the other team's Seeker."  
"That doesn't sound so hard," Harry commented.  
"Wait till you're up in the air. It's lightning fast and downright impossible to see. When the Snitch is caught, the game is over - and the Seeker earns their team an extra hundred and fifty points. The Seeker who catches the Snitch nearly always wins the game for their team. We won't practice with it today, though - it's too dark, and you might lose it. We'll practice with these instead," he said, holding up a bag of golf balls.  
"John, Fred'll be here in a minute. He's going to be levitating some old, disenchanted Bludgers for you to practice with."

"Hey, John," Fred exclaimed, a box of old Bludgers - little more than cannonballs now - floating behind him. "Ready to start practicing?"  
John nodded.  
"Excellent," Fred said, rubbing his hands together.

Minutes later, Fred was shooting balls at John as fast as John could hit them out of the way. Fred eventually decided to levitate just one ball, and have himself as the one John had to protect. Fred didn't take a single hit. John flew around him like lightning, smashing the ball out of the pitch every time it got close.  
"Hey, Wood!" Fred called as John hit the ball away yet again, "this kid's a natural!" Wood grinned, levitating another ball.  
"Let's see how well he guards three people against two Bludgers!"  
John groaned. _Two_ Bludgers? Did they have a death wish?

Moments later, they were all back on the ground. Harry and John hadn't missed their target balls once throughout the entire half hour - not for want of trying on Fred and Wood's parts, however.  
"That Quidditch Cup'll have out name on it this year," Wood said, delighted. "I wouldn't be surprised if you turned out better than Charlie Weasley, and he could have played for England if he hadn't gone off chasing dragons. John, though... John, you're in a whole different _league_ compared to George. The guy was a human Bludger himself, but you... I can't even describe it!" John shrugged.  
"Let's just keep it simple: I'm a really strong guy, and a Nimbus Two Thousand makes me fast to boot."Harry laughed as John spoke.

* * *

Halloween came around at last, and John and Harry couldn't help but notice Cortana and Max's absence at the feast. John mentioned as much to Hermione, and she replied with  
"They're in the girls' bathrooms. Malfoy said something quite horrible to them, and they really just want to be left alone right now." Harry and John accepted this, and Harry went back to his food. John, however, was uncharacteristically not hungry.  
"What's wrong, John?" Ron asked, his mouth full of food.  
"I just feel like there's something that's not quite right-"  
The Great Hall doors flew open with a resounding _BOOM!_

"TROLL! In the dungeons!" Professor Quirrell sprinted into the room, his turban askew and terror on his face. He reached Dumbledore's chair.  
"Troll," he gasped, "in the dungeons - thought you ought to know..." He passed out in a dead faint.  
Dumbledore stood up.  
"Prefects," he rumbled, "escort your houses back to their dormitories immediately!"

As they followed the rest of the first-years, John realized something.  
"Cortana and Max!" he exclaimed, glancing back at Harry and Ron.  
"They'll have no clue the troll is in the castle!" Harry and Ron nodded, and followed John hurriedly. They were all surprised, however, when Hermione accompanied them as well.  
"Cortana and Max are my friends, too. I'm not leaving them to a troll!"

They reached the girls' bathrooms just after the troll - and a pair of terrified screams. John took a moment to activate his armor before he smashed through the door, not bothering to open it and leaving a large hole behind him. The troll, aggravated by the noise, turned to face him.  
"Come on, then, you dumb ape! You want dinner? You gotta fight it!" The troll charged, swinging its massive club at John. The two goliaths, troll and human, collided with an enormous crash.  
"I broke a minotaur's spine to help one of the two girls you were about to attack!" John shouted, leaping at the troll's head. "What do you think I'll do to help my own sister?" His armored fists pummeled the troll's ugly face, distorting its already hideous features. The troll roared its rage, dragging him off and holding him upside down my his leg. John grinned behind his helmet.  
"Hey, pea-brain!" he shouted as it prepared to swing its club at him. The troll turned its head on one side, grunting.  
"I got four words for ya: NO TROLLS IN HOGWARTS!" He vanished in a puff of black smoke, which collapsed into a single point with a dull thud. Everyone was thoroughly surprised when he reappeared in another puff of smoke above the troll, this time holding a pair of weapons. _  
_

The weapons were made of a glowing, translucent, light blue material. They resembled swords, but each one had two blades and they extended in line with John's arm, rather than perpendicular as one would usually expect from swords. No matter what everyone thought, the purpose of these weapons was soon devastatingly clear as John landed on the troll's shoulders and proceeded to use them as a giant pair of scissors, slicing off the troll's head - and the blades cauterized the flesh, meaning not a drop of blood was spilt.

As the now headless troll's body collapsed to the floor, John leaped off its back, performing a backflip before landing in a kneeling position on the tiled floor, blades pointed to the sides. He stood up and rushed over to Max and Cortana, who were staring at the troll's body. The blades disappeared as he placed the hilts on the magnets attached to the outsides of his legs and returned his armor to being his robes. He spoke to Cortana first.

"Are you alright?" he asked. She nodded, and he helped her up. Cortana rushed over to Hermione, who hugged her comfortingly. Max, however, didn't respond to his question.  
"Max?" he placed a hand on her shoulder. She shrieked, and he fell over backwards. She began laughing hysterically as he picked himself up.  
"Sorry, John," she began as he looked at her sternly. "I was a bit zoned out. That was incredible, what you did just then." John shrugged.  
"It was an impulse," he replied. "I don't think I could do it again if I wanted to." Max shook her head.  
"Not the teleporting thing - but that was pretty damn epic as well - the thing with the swords! You just cut off its head like it was nothing!"

Professor McGonagall burst into the room, closely followed by Professor Snape and Professor Quirrell. Snape bent over the troll, noting its lack of a head.  
"What on earth were you thinking of?" Professor McGonagall said, cold fury evident in her voice. "You're lucky you weren't killed. Why aren't you in your dormitory?"  
John began to explain.  
"Professor, Cortana and Max were here, upset over something Malfoy had said - at least, that's what Hermione said. When Professor Quirrell came in, we realised they had no clue the troll was here, and we ran to let them know. If we'd waited long enough to tell someone else, they'd be dead right now, since the troll had already found them when we got here."  
"John was incredible!" Max cut in. "He took it on single-handedly, no-one else even got there fast enough!"  
McGonagall turned to John.  
"How did you manage to kill it?"

John took out the swords, activating them.  
"They came with my armor, and I've never used them before now." McGonagall stared at the blades as John deactivated them.  
"Well, if you ensure that you never use them against teachers, students, or magical creatures, you can keep them."  
"What if the magical creature in question attacks me first?" John asked.

McGonagall glared at him.

"Only as a last resort," she replied.


End file.
